Grand Canyon Suite

In 1916, Ferde Grofé drove across the Arizona desert with friends to watch the sun rise over the Grand Canyon. Fill in some pretty obvious details and fast forward to 1929, 1930, and 1931 and you get the Grand Canyon Suite and its' 5 movements - Sunrise, Painted Desert, On The Trail, Sunset, and Cloudburst.You can usually find a vinyl copy of Grofé's Grand Canyon Suite right next to Kristofferson and Streisand's A Star Is Born at your local thrift store.MP3: Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra Conducted by William Stromberg - Grand Canyon Suite: II The Painted Desert

Country Thunderstorm

Download the Country Thunderstorm MP3 at Closet Of Curiosities:

This superbly realistic colossus of a thunderstorm places you out on the front porch of a rural farm house. The storm begins with ominous distant rumblings. Thunderclaps soon build to foundation-shaking intensity. Water will seem to drip from your speakers as you experience the awesome power of nature. Leave it on for a while and you'll find you miss it when it ends.

Macho B

The last known jaguar in the United States, known as Macho B, was euthanized on March 2nd after doctors determined that it had irreversible kidney failure. Now, according to the NYT, the federal government  has opened a criminal investigation into the capture and death of Macho. A staff member of the Borderland Jaguar Detection Project, a group that worked with the Arizona Game and Fish Commission on jaguar conservation, claims to have been told by her boss, a biologist working for the Arizona Game and Fish Commission, to place female jaguar scat within six feet of a leg hold trap that was meant to capture mountain lion and black bear.Read more here.

Vogue Camping

CNN Reports:

So far this spring, family tent sales are up 14 percent over last year, said Rick Meade, REI's product manager for sleeping bags and tents. For March, sales are up 28 percent over the same month in 2008."We have a great sense that there is a resurgent interest in [camping], especially on the family camping side," Meade said.In California, many state parks are booked well into the spring, said Sheryl Watson, spokeswoman for California State Parks.On the first day reservations became available, 20,407 people reserved a July trip to a California state park, she said. That's up nearly 13 percent over last year's reservation numbers. By comparison, reservations were up 4 percent from 2007 to 2008.

(Thx)MP3: Canned Heat - Going Up The Country

Lost Man's River

About fifteen years after these photos were taken and seventeen years after The Snow Leopard was published, Peter Matthiessen wrote Killing Mr. Watson, a fictional tale of murder set in the Florida Everglades a hundred years ago. He'd go on to write a trilogy of the Watson tale with Lost Man's River and Bone By Bone to follow. I've never read any of these books, but in the midst of doing his research, Matthiessen did a lot of exploring of the Everglades and made a documentary/companion piece to the book appropriately titled Lost Man's River. Watch it. Matthiessen has a way of making the Everglades seem like the most beautiful yet undesirable place a man could ever want to spend his time. I think it'd be damn near impossible to visit that area and not become obsessed with it.Lost Man's River****** For some fucked up reason, Cold Splinters' images are different on Firefox than they are on Safari. Both search engines frame the images differently. On Safari, they're pushed over a bit so the borders on the above pictures look sloppy - they're cut off on the right side. It drives me nuts and I don't know how to fix it, SO, if y'all have any insight into this dilemma, please toss some much needed technical advice this way.

Ojo de Dios

Ojo de Dios:

In 1966 I was back in Guadalajara again, and saw a Huichol Indian on the pedestrian bridge leading to the marketplace, in his arms a large bundle of ojos. I watched from my vantage place on the second story of that huge central market, fascinated by this Indian's all white clothes and easy slow movements, as he stood for a few moments and surveyed the busy scene around him while holding his very colorful bundle. Later I bought a couple of the ojos and took them back to where I was staying in the small and exotic town of Ajijic, on Lake Chapala.

2 Million Acres

Sierra Blogging Post:

The House of Representatives signed legislation yesterday designating 2 million U.S. acres to be wild, including 250,000 acres in Colorado’s Rocky Mountain National Park.A wilderness designation effectively requires that the land remain undisturbed by development of any kind.